Stay Away! continued from page 11 rate. Charles “Rollie” Enos, a Denver lawyer who lived in the area, proposed incorporat- ing a new municipality that would be three miles long and one mile wide, running from Holly Street to South Clarkson Street be- tween Belleview Avenue and Orchard Road. The vote to incorporate as Green- wood Village took place in September 1950. One hundred and thirty-eight people came out to vote, and the mea- sure passed 74-64. Farmers who had opposed incor- poration, not wanting development restrictions on their land, fi led a lawsuit to nullify the incorporation. But the courts ultimately ruled in favor of it: Greenwood Village was here to stay, an idyllic suburban community. In 1967, Freda Poundstone moved to Greenwood Village. An infl uential Re- publican politician and lobbyist, she soon was pushing the Poundstone Amend- ment, which would prevent governments — with the big city of Denver the obvious target — from annexing property without the approval of voters in the areas being annexed. Colorado voters approved her proposal in 1974, and Poundstone went on to serve as mayor of Greenwood Village from 1985 to 1989. The Poundstone Amendment pro- hibited Denver from gobbling up its little neighbors, including Greenwood Village. But in the process, it also prevented the spread of court-ordered busing from the more racially diverse core city into the almost completely white suburbs. While sprawl continued in the metro area, Denver was confi ned to staying within its proscribed limits. Ironically, Greenwood Village had no problem growing through annexation. The town is now double its original size, with all of the additions coming to the east of the original boundaries. Today, Greenwood Village, which had a population of 15,691 in the 2020 U.S. Census, is known for its economic drivers: offi ce buildings by the Denver Tech Center and an outdoor concert venue, Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre. The town has an affl uent population and the nicest street signs in the metro area. But Greenwood Village is also unique 12 for an ordinance that its city council passed in 2014, limiting hotel and motel stays to no more than 29 days. While extended-stay lodging facilities with kitchens can host people for longer than that period, any motels or hotels without kitchens are kept to the 29-day limit. The law is an outlier in Colorado. No other municipalities have attempted to pass a similar ordinance, according to the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association. While Greenwood Village says the law is designed to address life and safety matters, it has other ramifi cations. Budget motels without kitchens are usually cheaper to stay in than extended-stay motels with kitchens. That means that homeless individuals who can only afford to stay in a cheaper motel — or whose sponsoring organizations are operating on shoestring budgets — will have to leave that motel after 29 days. While homelessness had long been viewed by many metro suburbs as a Denver- only issue, that opinion is changing. Since 2018, Littleton, Englewood and Sheridan have been collaborating on their approaches to homelessness; together, they hired a homelessness coordinator earlier this year. And the City of Aurora has focused signifi - caters to a wide variety of people: concert- goers, tourists, families waiting to move into new homes, and construction workers. And people experiencing homelessness stay at the Motel 6, too. After Neza Bharucha’s parents immi- grated to the United States, they started working at places like Red Lobster and fast-food restaurants to save money. They In 2008, Neza’s father, Neville Sarkari, purchased the Motel 6 in Greenwood Vil- lage; his wife had developed cancer and was receiving treatment at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She died in 2011. In the meantime, Neza moved to Atlanta for college and then went on to medical school before returning to Colorado for her medical residency in psychiatry at the University of Colorado hospital. Now 32, she works as a psychiatrist and manages the Motel 6 in Greenwood Village. She and Farhang bought the motel from her father, who moved back to In- dia. The Bharuchas have three children and a fourth on the way; after living in an apartment on the second fl oor of the motel, they bought their own home in Greenwood Village. In March 2020, Sue Sanders was at the beginning of her third year experienc- ing homelessness. She’d had a troubled past, studded with the tragic deaths of family members, estrangement from her siblings and an abusive relation- ship. She’d been out of work ever since a workplace accident left her with an injury that required a neck fusion. She lived off of her $1,000 monthly disability payments and had trouble making ends meet. Ultimately, she lost her home. She had been living in her car in the parking lot of a Walmart in Centennial. Other people experiencing homeless- ness lived in their cars there, too. She had a membership at a nearby rec center, where she could shower and tidy up. And she had a knack for making useful connections. “She emailed me saying she was out of resources and very cold,” recalls Stepha- nie Piko, the mayor of Centennial. She’d begun corresponding by email with Sand- ers that January, before the pandemic shut down all but essential businesses. “Because all of the rec centers were closed, she hadn’t had a shower in eleven days,” Piko says. Sanders’s car was broken down and she couldn’t afford to fi x it, so she be- gan searching for a new place to stay. She didn’t want to go to a homeless shelter, since she suffered from a va- riety of health ailments, including an autoimmune disease, and worried about catching COVID in an enclosed shelter. Fortunately for Sanders, a church stepped in and gave her a week-long voucher to stay at the Motel 6 in Green- wood Village — the cheapest motel in the area, with rooms at $53 a night. As the week was coming to a close, Farhang and Neza Bharucha own the Motel 6 in Greenwood Village (above), where Sue Sanders stayed. cant resources on homelessness. But other municipalities still don’t view homelessness as an issue they need to address. The Greenwood Village ordinance has had an outsized impact on the Motel 6 at 9201 East Arapahoe Road, one of the areas an- nexed into the suburb. Owned and operated by Neza and Farhang Bharucha, the motel eventually bought their fi rst motel in Gillette, Wyoming — a Motel 6 — where Neza, then just in the third grade, learned the trade. “We were helping with housekeeping, taking out the trash. Dad would have us sweep the parking lots on the weekend. We were taking out weeds, shoveling snow,” she recalls. She lived with her family on the second fl oor of the hotel. Sanders, who was becoming an out- spoken advocate in the media for the homeless, posted a note on a NextDoor group for the southern suburbs of Den- ver explaining her situation. Donations started pouring in, and Sanders was able to cover a full four weeks at the motel. She contacted Piko after she’d been at the motel around two weeks. “She apologized for not responding to me sooner, but she was just incredibly exhausted from having been so miserable, and she was just glad to sleep,” Piko says. Sanders kept busy continued on page 14 NOVEMBER 17-23, 2022 WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | westword.com EVAN SEMÓN EVAN SEMÓN
